


The Hunger Games: A Retelling

by EMCurtis



Category: The Hunger Games
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 18:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7695319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EMCurtis/pseuds/EMCurtis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story about how a host of immortals decide to take action against the inhumane treatment in the districts.  The characters will be morphing into the positions of a few of our favorite characters and will be operating around the rest throughout the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hunger Games: A Retelling

A rush of auburn hair sprints for the door, her cheeks are flushed and her petite frame is stretching her stride as wide as possible. Prying it open, she jumps in and crashes into the wall behind it. Slower than she would like, the wall melts around her, enclosing her in the safe cocoon of the vortex. Just as the edges of the world begin to glimmer and stretch, she catches a glimpse of one of the soldiers staring in disbelief as her body dematerializes into a stream of energy.

Safe in the labyrinth of passages and doorways, she visualizes her home. The swirling energy creates a moonlit road for her to follow, leading her to a gateway. She steps through and immediately the swirling energy stabilizes around her solidifying into a dark space. Mustering all the concentration she can, she forces her own body to coalesce again. For most the process is reversed, but being made of pure light and stardust it is nothing for her to dissolve into the streams of energy that are the vortex. However, returning to a solid, more human, form afterwards causes her a degree of difficulty. Nonetheless, she is quite accustomed to the transformation at this point and pulls it off in under a minute. It makes her laugh now to think back to her first vortex voyage, when she spent the better part of a day trying to pull herself back together.

Reaching out through the dark, she feels the cool brass of the doorknob. She pushes forward and a cheerful light warms her and the smells of spiced cider and gingerbread bring a smile to her face. 'I am home,' she thinks. Looking down she sees mud and dust and she knows without looking that her hair is full of needles and branches from her earlier sprint. Turning left with a sigh, she enters a wooded room. The room is fairly large as wash closets go, the walls are made of slate and within the slight fractures and shelves that natural rocks form with live a collection of vining plants, orchids and air plants. All flooded by the natural light coming in through the domed skylight above. The floor is made of river rocks and small pebbles, immediately recognizable as a riverbed. A small stream, covered by glass, creates a smooth floor and a window beneath which aquatic creatures roam. This stream curves around an ancient, gnarled tree (which is in fact a sink of petrified wood nested into a cleverly carved vanity and cupboard) before cutting into the room and darting to the foot of an impressive rock outcrop. Reaching just beyond the tree, Asteria starts the water and adjusts the temperature. She smiles as the water begins to tumble down the rock out crop, she waits a minute before reaching into the man-made waterfall that her friend Tama had helped her to engineer centuries earlier. Noting that the temperature is where she wants it she steps under the water, fully clothed and still carrying her pack. 

'I may as well rinse these things off before even making an attempt at cleaning them,' she thinks as she pulls her pack forward, running her hand over it before setting it aside and away from the fall. Washing off she slowly takes stalk of all that she has seen and done in the last few weeks. 'Why did I even leave home? I suppose Tavish was right, I should have stayed put. Europe was always better at the whole rebuilding thing after all. It would make sense that Vera and Lucien would be experiencing a world reformed.' 

Stepping out from beneath the waterfall she grabs her towel and wraps it around her body gently before shutting off the fall. She contently draws in the humid air as she wanders back to the outcropping before kneeling down and grabbing her pack, emptying its contents onto the shower floor. As she begins to sift through her belongings, she tosses the pack and her clothes into the small pool beneath the rock outcropping and towel-dries all of the non-laundry items before setting them at her side. 'Ugh… I always forget about my notes.' She winces as she pulls the soaked leather file free of the rest of the debris and wraps it in a towel. Leaving the rest as is, she wanders into her library towel wrapped file in hand. 

The library is two-stories tall, with a 3 wheeled ladders and an upper balcony that leads into her guest rooms. The room is naturally lit by a glass dome upon which jasmine grows and twists. Once there she grabs the string she has never bothered to take down from one side of the room and walks with it across the room and sets the loose end upon the hook that, like the string, she has never bothered to take down. Next she steps over to the small table, nested between two loveseats, and begins dragging the table across the large area rug. Once situated near the line, she lays the towel wrapped file upon it and opens a small drawer removing a box of laundry pins and setting it beside the file. She then gets to work, carefully removing the pages and hanging them, in order, from one end of the room to the other. She sets a small fire burning in the hearth before leaving the room to finish unpacking and washing her well-worn adventure gear.

A few hours later, she steps out of her kitchen in a shirt she had stolen from her best friend Tavish back in the 20th century, it was his favorite back then. Since that time, it has become her favorite as well. There are holes everywhere in it now and where there are none, the material has been worn so thin that it may as well be sheer. Coupled with a pair of shorts she made from a pashmina scarf, it is her favorite outfit to lounge around the house and research in. She wouldn't be caught dead in it though if anyone were to visit.

She sets her tea down on the little end table between the two loveseats, tosses a pillow and blanket on the floor, before wandering forward to collect her dried research from the line. Again she makes sure to keep all of her pages in order. For the most part her notes are handwritten in pencil, but on a number of others are an assortment of charcoal sketches. She settles down onto her pillow, draws the blanket over her lap and begins to read through her research, hoping that she has misremembered the things she saw when she journeyed south. As she finishes each page, she carefully slides it into an archival sleeve and set into a new file folder.

About an hour later she has finished reading her notes, bends back in a cat like stretch and none to gracefully regains her footing on a foot that probably fell asleep half an hour earlier. Gingerly she places weight onto the tingling appendage and makes her way to the fire. She stokes the coals and tosses on a fresh log. Then she makes her way into the kitchen for a fresh cup of tea and a quick bite. 

The kitchen is galley style with two long counter tops. One stretches from the doorway to the stove top and terminates at the pantry door. The other starts after a small refrigerator that runs on magic, many thanks to the combined efforts of Willem and Tavish, and stretches to the door that leads to the garden. Asteria’s garden is her sanctuary, really she can only think of two people who have unguarded access to it. There is a permanent abundance of fresh vegetation within it. Thanks to her own special ability. 

Her people, the celestials, are given a special ability which allows them to create a solitary living space for themselves. It can be as large as they desire and filled with anything they can imagine. The catch is that they can only create one. Having been forced out of the celestial plane at birth she traveled north into the Arctic. Having climbed into a cave and proceeded down a steep decent she found herself with an untouched world of ice. This is where she decided to build her home. She forced the center to the sea floor and it expanded beneath the ice. No matter the fact that it is beneath water as the shell was built and repels the sea creatures at a certain depth. At that time she simply imagined a small shack with a fire place and kitchenette and the garden, the 2 acre garden of vegetation that is always ready to be enjoyed. She is able to govern the garden and it provides her with the benefits of all four seasons produce. Being more of a gatherer than a hunter, game is vastly abundant in the orchards beyond.

She grabs a knife and her cutting board and makes quick work of assembling a sandwich of pesto and veggies and some of her aged cheeses. Thankfully, she knows how to whip up a quick bread from her very aged starter. She started the sourdough back in the 1850s. By a collection of minor miracles, she has managed to keep it alive all these centuries. Armed with a newly formed sandwich and a fresh pot of tea she heads back to the library. 

She opens her card catalogue, and begins pulling cards: democracy (fall of), tyrants (rise and fall), tribute fees, slavery, etc.) With the aid of the cards she begins to make piles of books around her coffee table. By the time she finishes pulling books, she can tell that the sun is sinking in the sky and she snaps the candles to life, again many thanks to Willem and Tavish, adds another log to the fire and settles into her research.

* * *

Days have passed since she began her research and now Asteria is more certain than ever that things are horribly wrong in the south. The next question is whether she should try to help. She utters a disbelieving snort before uttering to herself, “of course I am going to help, the real question is whether or not the others will want to help me.” She pauses only a moment before grabbing a pen and a pile of cards, “only one way to find out.”


End file.
